The manner of the sacrifice, not the material, is the real clue to the significance of the title Meilichios. Zeus as Meilichios demanded a holocaust, a whole burnt-offering. The Zeus of Homer demanded and received the tit-bits of the victim, though even these in token of friendly communion were shared by the worshippers. Such was the custom of the Ouranioi, the Olympians in general. Zeus Meilichios will have all or nothing. His sacrifice is not a happy common feast, it is a dread renunciation to a dreadful power, hence the atmosphere of ‘chilly gloom.’ It will later be seen that these _un_-eaten sacrifices are characteristic of angry ghosts demanding placation and of a whole class of underworld divinities in general, divinities who belong to a stratum of thought more primitive than Homer. For the present it is enough to mark that the service of Zeus Meilichios is wholly alien to that of the Zeus of Homer. The next passage makes still clearer the nature of this service. Most fortunately for us Pausanias, when at Myonia in Locris, visited[31] a sanctuary, not indeed of Zeus Meilichios, but of ‘the Meilichians.’ He saw there no temple, only a grove and an altar, and he learnt the nature of the ritual. ‘The sacrifices to “the Meilichians” are at night-time and it is customary to consume the flesh on the spot before the sun is up.’ Here is no question of Zeus; we have independent divinities worshipped on their own account and with nocturnal ceremonies. The suspicion begins to take shape that Zeus must have taken over the worship of these dread Meilichian divinities with its nocturnal ceremonial. The suspicion is confirmed when we find that Zeus Meilichios is, like the Erinyes, the avenger of kindred blood. Pausanias[32] saw near the Kephissos ‘an ancient altar of Zeus Meilichios; on it Theseus received purification from the descendants of Phytalos after he had slain among other robbers Sinis who was related to himself through Pittheus.’ Again Pausanias[33] tells us that, after an internecine fray, the Argives took measures to purify themselves from the guilt of kindred blood, and one measure was that they set up an image of Zeus Meilichios. Meilichios, Easy-to-be-entreated, the Gentle, the Gracious One, is naturally the divinity of purification, but he is also naturally the other euphemistic face of _Maimaktes_, he who rages eager, panting and thirsting for blood. This Hesychius[34] tells us in an instructive gloss. Maimaktes-Meilichios is double-faced like the Erinyes-Eumenides. Such undoubtedly would have been the explanation of the worship of Zeus Meilichios by any educated Greek of the fifth century B.C. with his monotheistic tendencies. Zeus he would have said is all in all, Zeus Meilichios is Zeus in his underworld aspect—Zeus-Hades.